


Having Overslept

by lusteralliance (orphan_account)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Character Death, Dehydration, Gen, Graphic Description, Injury, Starvation, kind of, these are some specific tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23803630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/lusteralliance
Summary: Byleth finds himself in a chasm after the Battle of Garreg Mach, where Sothis has let him sleep for one hundred years.
Kudos: 18





	Having Overslept

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't been here for 100 years tbh
> 
> hi im actually back because its DIMIASHE WEEK?? i was not informed smh, here's a wip that i dropped but picked back up but it's genuinely bad, i'll prolly write dimiashe later too

_Get on your feet. Right now! I’ll coddle you no more! You are just like a child, always needing me to hold your hand…_

The voice seemed to come from miles away, echoing in his mind as if it were hollow. 

Byleth tried to pry his eyes open, but his eyelids felt heavier than stone. He tried to raise his head, but pain erupted in the base of his neck and he cried out, his voice hoarse and nearly tearing his throat apart. It felt as if a layer of dried mud was caking the inside of his mouth. What had happened to him?

He heard voices again, but closer and muffled, and the vibration of footsteps.

“Whoa, he’s alive.”

“Get some water, some food—do you have bandages?”

“Here, give him your cloak.”

Something warm was draped over him, covering patches of his bare, raw skin, and Byleth gritted his teeth in pain. His consciousness was fading in and out, trying to process what was happening.

His students.

He gasped, and his eyes snapped open, stinging from the light and the dryness; two blurry, dark figures were huddled over him, with a long, thin line of white seeming to cut through the sky. The chasm. He remembered.

“My—” Byleth’s voice broke, and he swallowed feebly. “My students—I—”

“Whoa, whoa,” murmured one of the people. He placed a warm hand over Byleth’s forehead. “Slow down, you’re barely alive, you know.”

“We found you at the bottom of this chasm,” the other person chimed in. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself for a while. Here, have some water.”

Byleth recoiled from the blurry flask that was handed to him, and he turned with a grunt onto his stomach, dirt collecting under his nails as he clenched his hands into fists. His nails? He squinted down at himself through watery eyes, and he saw that his clothing was in tatters. There were cuts and gashes in his exposed skin, swollen and crusted with infection, and he could see his own bones under the pale skin hanging loosely off his frame.

“How...how long have…” Byleth raised his head slowly, looking up at the people sitting close to him. Their faces were blurred, as if they were made of smeared paint. One had brown hair and tan skin, and the other had silky, dark green locks, tied in a messy bun. “...Linhardt?”

The green-haired one’s bluish eyes lit up. “That’s my grandfather!”

Grandfather. Byleth stared blankly, and then Linhardt’s grandson held his breath. “Wait...that’s my grandfather. You knew my grandfather?”

“He...he is my student,” Byleth rasped. The brown-haired young woman glanced at her companion uneasily. “I...I need to return to them...I left them, and they were in danger…”

“Um...sir, did you teach at Garreg Mach?”

Byleth’s streaming eyes widened, and he nodded. “Yes. Yes, can you take me there?”

The two people looked at each other again. Then, the young woman murmured, “Sir, Garreg Mach was destroyed one hundred years ago.”

Byleth took in the words, then lay his head down in the dirt. One hundred years.

_Sothis,_ he thought. _Why have you let me sleep for one hundred years?_ She did not respond. _Why have you kept me alive?_

“Are they,” he began faintly, and they started to wrap him up carefully in the cloak. “Are my students...still…?”

“They’re gone, sir,” the young man told him. “You’re not in good shape, neither mentally or physically. I think you need to just rest—we’ll figure all this out.”

Byleth let the tears fall, too weak to sob; one hundred years. One hundred years, he slept, and left his students to their own devices—and now they were dead.

“Don’t cry,” the young woman comforted him. “Just calm down. We’ll get you to a healer, and they will fix you right up, okay?”

“No,” Byleth croaked, his eyes squeezing shut. “I can’t…”

“You can’t what, sir?”

“There’s no point. My students are gone.”

“What about your family?”

Byleth felt a sob rise up in his chest, then fizzle out into a weak cough. Everyone was gone; he was all alone again. Had Sothis not kept him alive, he could have...

“...Let’s let him rest. I think that’s what he wants,” Linhardt’s grandson murmured. 

“...Okay.”

They wrapped Byleth up more cozily in the cloak, and he heard their feet shifting in the dried mud at the bottom of the chasm as they sat down beside him to keep him company. When he felt the last of his strength ebbing away, and merciful sleep washing over him like a lulling tide, he saw the hands of his students reaching towards him. Their smiling faces.

And his father’s hand—calloused, warm, familiar. Safe. 

Before Byleth could reach for him

**Author's Note:**

> the ending's like that bc he died its not an error i promise


End file.
